can i upgrade my wifi card on my laptop to a dual band wifi card

[Zg1]

I have an hp 15-ac158nr laptop and I would like to upgrade the wifi card to a dual band wifi card. is it possible to do it and if so, which cards could I use. Thank you in advance.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Unfortunately, that would not be possible because for some reason your model has a BIOS whitelist, which prevents the installation of unsupported wifi adapters.

All of the supported wifi cards listed in the service manual are single band (2.4 GHz) wifi cards.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04653884

Also, there is only one antenna wire in your notebook, and all dual band wifi cards except one, require two wifi antenna cables.

[Zg1]

Hi, 

Thank you for your reply. I have one more question. On the link you attached with the maintenance manual, on page 3 of the product description, under wireless networking, it show "Support for the following WLAN formats:  Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165 802.11 ac 1x1 WiFi + BT 4.0 Combo Adapter". Does that mean that my laptop would be able to recognize that specific wifi adaptor? My computer does have only one antenna, but I was able to upgrade another HP laptop with one antenna, so I don't mind installing another antenna. I'm just not sure if this laptop is able to be upgraded to a dual band.  Thanks in advance for your help.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

That's interesting.  I missed that info.

If you look in chapter 3, the intel card is not listed.

So the question would be...what HP part number is the Intel wifi adapter?

I don't think that any model 3165 will work because of the whitelist.

I'm gonna take an educated guess, and say it is this one...my guess is based on that this card is listed in the HP 250 G5 service manual and it shows that both the older 3165 was supported as well as the newer 3168.

The 250 G5 is the next generation version of the 250 G4, which shares the same service manual as your model.

Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165 802.11 ac 1x1 WiFi + BT 4.2 Combo    HP Part # 806723-005

The card will work with one antenna if you connect it to the wifi card's main terminal but you will not have any BT because of the lacking second antenna.

So, if you run the second cable and attach it to the card's auxiliary terminal, the BT should work.

[Zg1]

Thank you for your help. I will try it out and see if it works. I will let you know if it does. Might take a while, it's going to be couple of weeks to receive the card. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

Glad to have been of assistance.

Looking forward to reading about a successful outcome.